568: 15 Transactions for Week 8

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Speaker 1: This is the Label Podcast with your host JJ Zacher Retha j J Zacher Reason, what's up everyone? It's JJ Zachares and the editor in chief at fandled at Number five dot com in this episode five hundred and sixty eight of the Late Round podcast. So many shows that are part of the FanDuel podcast network. Thanks for tuning in. I know this is a football show, but I'm sure a lot of you are basketball fans too well. The NBA is back and so is Fandals Free over Under contest. It's simple. Just head over to fandle dot com, slash over under and choose either over or under for each listed prop. You can make free picks for a chance to win a share five thousand dollars. All you have to do is make your picks on Fandel before every NBA on TNT broadcast for your shot at a big payday. Eligibility restrictions apply. Go to fandle dot com or download the Fandle lap for more details. It's a fifteen transactions day. Let's get to it by Javonte Williams. So a lot of you listening to this right now, you kind of know the direction that your fantasy roster is going in. Maybe you have six wins, maybe you're undefeated, and you know that you're looking towards the playoffs. You're looking to set your team up right for that playoff run. Some of you may only have two or three wins. In that case, you need to invite a little bit more variance onto your team. I would say that this recommendation is more so for the former. Usually when you have a running back and a timeshare who's coming off a game where he scored a touchdown, usually he would be a cell candidate. I mean, Javonte Williams peripherals are not that great this year. He's one of thirty running backs with a running back rush air of forty six percent or better, and he has a target shair that's still below ten percent this year. But here's why I'm buying. And again, I think this is more for like the seven or six win team. Williams obviously has just inherent upside. If anything were to happen to Melvin Gordon, I think he'd be a fringe RB one. He might just be an RB one, and that might just naturally happen without an injury. He's a good rookie running back He's flashed his tackle breaking ability this season. Is it that crazy to think that if Denver is out of the picture, if Denver keeps losing, they just decide to use Javonte Williams more. I don't think it's that crazy to think that could happen. But here's the other thing. Once we get to the fantasy football playoffs, Denver is set up very very well. They get Detroit in Week fifteen, Cincinnati in week sixteen, in Las Vegas in week seventeen. That's one of the best schedules you're gonna find for a running back. The Lions and the Raiders are top six teams for running backs in terms of justin panneys to points allowed, and Cincinnati's a top twelve team. So there are a couple of outs for Javonte Williams to sort of be a better fantasy asset. Melvin Gordon could get hurt, he could just see more work in general, and then the schedule itself lends to Williams doing very well in the fantasy playoffs. So if you're looking ahead, if you're planning ahead, I think Javonte Williams is a goodbye this week sell or. Hold Joe Burrow. Now, look, I get Joe Burrows a quarterback. There may not be that big of a market for him. And if that's the case, just keep Joe Burrow, keep him on your roster. He's not going to just disappear. He's playing very, very good football right now, but his statistics likely aren't that sustainable, not this sustainable. Through seven games, Burrow has an eight percent touchdown rate. He's thrown seventeen touchdowns on two hundred and twelve attempts since the merger. Among quarterbacks with three hundred and more pass attempts in the season, that rate's been hit just thirteen times. You can look at this a different way too. Burrow has nineteen hundred and fifty six passing yards right now. Over the last decade before this twenty twenty one season, quarterbacks have thrown a touchdown on average for every one hundred and sixty one point three passing yards. This season, that numbers a little bit lower because quarterbacks have been more efficient than numbers one hundred and fifty four point two. Joe Burrow is currently throwing a touchdown for every one hundred and fifteen passing yards. Again, it might be a little bit tough to sell Burrow high right now because I don't know if the market is totally understanding how well he's playing. But if someone in your league thinks that this is sustainable, that he can keep up this touchdown rate, I would consider trading him away. He'll be good from here on out, but we should bet on a little bit of regression by T. Higgins. So as we know, Jamar Chase is absolutely destroying the NFL right now. And even though I just said to sell Joe Burrow, I am not selling Jamar Chase. I don't think Chase is gonna be able to keep this up. But you don't give players like that away. You don't trade them away. And we know that Jamar Chase is incredibly talented. He was a ninety nine percentile wide receiver in my prospect model. But don't let this Jamar Chase season overshadow what T. Higgins is doing, at least from a volume perspective. Higgins dealt with a shoulder injury and that sidelined him for a couple of weeks earlier in the year, but he's been seeing really good volume in this offense when he's been healthy. He had a forty one point seven percent target share. This past week against Baltimore, He's now seen more targets than Jamar Chase has when Higgins has been healthy. Higgins is out targeted Chase forty three to thirty seven. And that's not a knock on Chase. It's to say that T Higgins, despite how well Jamar Chase is played, is seeing a ton of volume in this offense. The production just isn't matching yet, but it should eventually. Ad Rashad Bateman, the waiver wire does not look very good this week. So that's forcing me to talk about a guy who I've talked about a lot on the fifteen Transaction Show, and that's Rashad Bateman. He's still rostered in just thirty two percent of Yahoo leagues his last two outings, his first two outings of his career, he saw six targets in both of them. His target share in week six was about twenty two percent, and that dropped to about fifteen percent this past week. But even this past week on that lower target chair, he was able to still catch three passes for eighty yards. He gave us a double digit PPR performance. Rashat Bateman is incredibly talented and as I've said on this show, although Baltimore is still a run heavy team, in total, they're more pass heavy than they've been in recent seasons with Lamar Jackson under center. So Rashot Bateman should be rostered in way more leagues drop Allan Robinson. Honestly, I would rather have her shot Bateman rest of season than Alan Robinson. Seriously. I understand that it might feel uncomfortable dropping Robinson right now because he has about a twenty three percent target share in the Chicago Bears offense. But as I said on last week's show, I was gonna wait and see how Robinson fared against his Tampa Bay secondary. It was a decent enough matchup on paper. Tampa Bay has had a beatable secondary, and Robinson came through with two catches sixteen yards and his lowest target share of the season. Robinson's season high in PPR points is just ten point four. He's ranked no higher than wide receiver forty seven in any week this year. I don't know how you can confidently play him. Even if he gives you a couple of good performances, You're still not gonna feel that confident. So I think in a lot of leagues, a lot of twelve and ten team leagues. You can drop Allan Robbins, sell David Montgomery. So let's stick with the Chicago Bears for a second. David Montgomery is eventually going to be back from his knee injury. And I know that a lot of you listening to this you stashed him away. You're waiting for Montgomery to return so you can have an RB one again. But I'm a little bit nervous. Khalil Herbert has looked very, very, very good. In weeks one through three. Montgomery handled a running back rush share per game of about eighty eight percent. He had a seventeen percent target shareer better. In two of those three games. The backfield was his. All the volume in that backfield that was his, So if the offense didn't do very well, it wasn't as big of a deal because Montgomery was seeing so much work. But like I just said, I'm afraid of what happens when he returns because Khalil Herbert has looked so good. On Sunday, Herbert became just the third back since the end of the twenty eighteen season to rush for one hundred and more yards against the Buccaneers, and even though he had that matchup against Tampa Bay, he now has a fifty percent success rate on the season according to number fires Expected points model. That's eight percentage points better than what we saw from David Montgomery before his injury. Now, maybe this transaction is kind of obvious. Maybe there's not really a market for Montgomery after Herbert's performance, But this transaction is mostly to say, if I were banking on Montgomery for the playoffs, I'm a lot more nervous today than I was two weeks ago, and Kenneth Gainwell and Boston Scott so at the time in this recording, I don't know exactly how long Miles Sanders is going to be sidelined because of an ankle injury that he suffered against the Raiders. He might not be sidelined at all, but he did leave that game against the Raiders, and we saw a split backfill between Boston Scott and Kenneth Gainwell. As a result, Scott had more rush attempts. He had seven rush attemps to Gainwell's five, but Gainwell led the way once again through the air. He had a twenty five point eight percent target chair against Las Vegas, I think Gainwell's the priority off the waiver wire this week, especially in PPR formats. But do keep in mind that Boston Scott saw goalline work in that game. He's not gonna just disappear. This is not gonna just be Kenneth Gainwell's backfield. If Miles Sanders is indeed out, so add both this week and monitor this Miles Sanders injury by DJ Moore. So there's a lot of chaos going on in Carolina because of this quarterback situation, and that's gonna make people feel worse about DJ Moore. And it doesn't help that Moore's recent performances haven't been very good. He's been the wide receiver forty nine, the wide receiver thirty eight, and the wide receiver twenty Over his last three games, he's averaging eleven PPR points per game. Across his first four contest that number was twenty two point four. Now, the good news is that Moore's work in the offense has not dramatically changed. During his first four games, when he was playing really well, he was averaging a target chair per game of thirty point seven percent. Over his last three that's still been really strong at twenty six point seven percent. In terms of raw targets, he averaged ten point eight targets per game over his first four and that's been ten over his last three. So yeah, his volume's gone down a little bit, but not that much, and it was to be expected anyway. One of the main differences between the first four games and the last three is touchdowns. He had three touchdowns in weeks one through four, but he's failed to find the end zone in each of his last three. But he also was just converting better at the start of the season, and that coincides with Sam Darnold not playing very well. Moore's rate of seeing fifteen plus airyard throws has actually increased over the last three weeks. Ten of his thirty targets over his last three games have traveled fifteen or more air yards. That's a thirty three percent rate. Across the first four games, he had nine to fifteen plus air yard targets out of forty three. That's about a twenty one percent rate. So here's where I stand. I think DJ Moore is an incredibly good player, and if you're a believer that Carolina's quarterback situation can't get that much worse than it's been, which I think is a pretty fair take, especially if they do end up getting to Shaun Watson, then you should be buying Dj Moore because touchdowns are naturally gonna flow his way given the amount of volume that he's seeing in that offense. And he's still been decent enough in fantasy football despite the offense playing so poorly. So I would expect something in the middle between the first four weeks of the season and the last three. I would not expect the last three weeks to continue ad Will Fuller. So Fuller's eligible to come off i AR this week, and the Dolphins could definitely use him because over their last three games, Mac Collins is second on the team in wide receiver routes run. They got to do better than that, And honestly, the situation in Miami for a pass catcher is not nearly as bad as you might think. On the season, the Dolphins are sixth in pass attempts per game, first in pass rate, and fifth and pass rate when in neutral gamescript situations. So Fuller's able to walk in and see a fifteen percent twenty percent target share in that offense, maybe even more, then he's gonna be a nice piece for your roster, and he's still out there. In seventy one percent of Yahoo leagues sell Elijah Mitchell. I like Elijah Mitchell as a player. I talked about him a lot on this show during both the pre draft process and over the last month or two, and he looked really good on Sunday Night. He ran the ball eighteen times for one hundred and seven yards against the Colts. And as I said in the Mailbag episode last week, I do think he can produce as an RB two from here on out, but I think he's going to be on the lower end rather than the upper end of that RB two range. I'm concerned about his ceiling, and again this is something that I talked about on the Mailbag show last week. Jamichael Hasty returned for San Francisco in Week seven. He had that ankled injury, and he had the exact same role in Week seven that he had in Week two when he got hurt. He was the primary pass catching back, he played third downs, and he was the hurry up back. Against Indianapolis, he had a twenty two percent target chair in that game. Elijah Mitchell didn't see a single target and that's the concern. In four games, Mitchell has seen target shairs of zero percent, six point seven percent, seven point one percent, and zero percent. What that means is that in order for him to be a huge difference maker in fantasy football, he's gonna have to just go nuts on the ground and score a lot of touchdowns. I don't want to bank on that within this forty nine ers offense. Anytime there's a negative game script, there's risk that Elijah Mitchell won't be on the field. And San Francisco has one of the harder schedules from here on out, so they could face some negative game scripts. Not only that, but there's even more annoyance because Jeff Wilson's gonna potentially return, and Wilson, like I talked about last week, he could steal some goal line work that would be a massive loss for Mitchell. There's just a lot of things that could potentially work against Mitchell from here on out. And I'm not sitting here saying that he can't be in RB two. Like I said, I just worry about the ceiling. I don't know where that consistent ceiling is gonna come from. As a result, I think now's the time to sell add Brandon Bolden. I got it wrong last week. I thought Romandre Stevenson was a really good ad off the waiver wire. I even thought that he was a good deep play at the running back position, and then he was a healthy scratch. You know, in week six, we finally saw Stevenson run the most routes out of that backfield. Just one week later, Stevenson was a scratch and Brandon Bolden played that diet James White role. And I guess we got to look Brandon Bolden's way this week, especially because waivers are pretty thin. He ran the most routes out of the backfield for New England in week seven, and he saw seventeen and a half percent target share in negative game scripts. Brandon Bolden could be viable in PPR formats, and this week the Patriots are five and a half point underdogs against the Chargers. By Tyler Higbee. Now look the tight end position. It's rough. It's been rough all season long. If you feel a little bit stuck, I think that Higbee makes some sense. He's had a couple of down games this season in terms of target share. In one game, he had a three point four percent share and another it was five point seven percent. But in his other five games played, he's averaged a seventeen point four percent target shair per game, with a low of thirteen point two percent. Let me just put that another way. He's seen roughly fourteen percent of LA's targets this year, as a top twelve target share at the position, but that's also being weighed down by a couple of really low target share games. According to PFF, Higby's run the third most routes on the Rams this year. Robert Woods has run twenty three more routes than Tyler Higbee. That's a little over three per game. Across the entire league, only six tight ends have run more routes than Tyler Higbee has. You have to sit here and think that that could eventually lead to more production, or at least lead to spikes in production, which is sometimes all you need at the tight end position. Considering the offense that he's playing in and how his work could naturally see an uptick if there is an injury to one of the pass catchers there, I think he's kind of an interesting by low option ad Darius Slayton, so Kenny Galladay, Sakuon Barkley, Kadarius Tony, Sterling Shepherd. They're all banged up and not allowed Darius Slayton to emerge. In Week seven. He played the most snaps at wide receiver for the Giants and he finished with a season high twenty eight percent target share. He had five catches on nine targets for sixty three yards. We'll see how things sort of shake out this week. We'll see which wide receivers are back, but I do think that Slayton is worth adding off the waiver wire this week in case those wide receivers are not ready, especially because the Giants get the Chiefs. Add Daniel Jones, and speaking of that Chiefs matchup, Daniel Jones is a decent streamer. The game against Kansas City has a fifty two and a half point over under and the Chiefs are ten point favorites. We're likely going to see a lot of passing from the Giants, and Kansas City is a top five team and adjusted Fantasy points allowed to quarterbacks this year. They've allowed a top twelve QB one performance in five of their seven games played. So I like Daniel Jones this week, but if you don't want to go that route, you could look at Carson Wentz against Tennessee. Add the Cincinnati Bengals defense, so it sounds like Zach Wilson's gonna miss at least a couple of weeks with the Sprain pcl. That means that Mike White is gonna be New York starter against Cincinnati this week. And to be honest with you, guys, I don't know if this is an upgrade or a downgrade for the Jets offense or at least for a defense facing the Jets, because so far this year, when looking at justin fantasy points allowed, the Jets have been the best matchup for opposing defenses. Regardless, the Bengals are a good play according to Fandels Sportsbook, They're nine and a half point favorites and the game has an over under of just forty three and a half. They're a very very strong streamer this week. The sixteen transaction this week that you can't get in my fifteen transactions call him over on number fire dot com is to buy Zach Moss. This was a transaction from a couple of weeks ago, and then against the Titans in Week six, Moss came out and had his worst outing of the season, he scored just five point nine PPR points. I'm an idiot, but honestly, guys, the peripherals were still pretty strong. In that game against the Titans, Moss handled sixty one and a half percent of the team's running back rushes and he had a nine percent target share. That was good for eight rush attempts and four targets. That type of running back rush share is going to come in handy over the next month because Buffalo gets Miami this week, then Jacksonville, then the Jets, and then the Colts. At the very least, their next three games should invite nice positive game scripts and that could see Moss hitting twelve to fifteen rush attempts per game to go along with some touchdown upside. Because he's the team's goal lineback. You can probably trade bench assets for Zach Moss right now, and I would do that because I think he's got RB two potential during this stretch. That's going to know for today's show, though, thanks to all of you for listening. If you've got subscribed to the Late Round podcast, make sure you are by starching for it pretty much anywhere podcast can be found, you know, for to follow me on Twitter at late round QB. Thanks everyone, I'll talk to you tomorrow with the weekly ten Trend Show.